Urban Meyer woke up every morning for decades hearing the hum of The Grind -- recruiting, his players, his staff, that week's opponent, recruiting and more recruiting -- ringing in his ears. Then, when he stepped down after the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, he woke up one morning, the hum was gone and the silence that replaced it was deafening.
"I'm retraining my whole life," he said back in August. "That’s probably been the hardest. Mornings are the hardest. I’m an early riser. I want to go attack something, and sometimes there is nothing to attack.”
Months later, in an interview for ESPN's college basketball podcast with Dan Dakich and Seth Greenberg, Meyer said the mornings are still the hardest, but they're roughly as third as hard as they were at this start of his retirement.
"The hardest part of the day is the first 30 minutes, every morning. It's down to about 30 minutes now," he said last week. "It used to be about an hour, hour and a half where I missed it so bad. But then I'm so into this FOX college football team that I have, I'm so into some other things, whether it be business opportunities. It's just really intriguing, this other world. I'm also into my grandchildren and my wife and family, and we're traveling and doing some other cool things. I played Augusta two weeks ago, who would think I would ever do that in the fall? It's a nice life out there."
Now, I would never, ever, ever say never about Urban returning to coaching. He's a football addict, a competition addict, a purpose addict. His life is defined by having an opponent to attack, and some day he may wake up deciding that business, or golf, or TV can't fill that whole in his heart.
Heck, he may get the itch this weekend, after returning to the Horseshoe for last week's Penn State and now being on the scene at The Game as part of his FOX duties.
But, man, have you ever heard Urban say, "It's a nice life out there"?
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.